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I’m in the process of setting up a new home theater which will serve double-duty as my music setup. After much research into many different speaker designs I have come to a conclusion about replicating the sound of live music, discussed below in some detail. It's sort of a grenade tossed at present standard audio speaker designs. But will it explode or just fizzle? If it does, the sounds you hear are exploding box speakers.
Until recently it had been a puzzle to me why it was still generally easy to tell the difference between live music and reproduced music, even though the quality of the source material, amplifiers, and speakers has significantly improved from my young days with tubes and vinyl (subjectivist tube-and-LP loving audiophiles notwithstanding). Although audiophiles often go to great expense (including such snake oil products as magic power cords, HiFi fuses, and exotic cables) to strive to get ever more accurate music reproduction from their box speakers, there is still usually something lacking in the end result that prevents the music from sounding “live”. Perhaps that’s part of the reason for the never ending pursuit of better fidelity, sometimes to ridiculous lengths. The listener is aware something is missing and thinks it’s some lack of fidelity, when perhaps it’s really just a lack of the live music ambience. They have a desire for this ambience, even if it’s not recognized as that, and the hope that it will somehow appear with the next small increment of improved fidelity, that fractional dB improvement in frequency response flatness or small percentage of distortion reduction or more power output or…. But, with typical box speakers, I now consider that a futile pursuit.After reading numerous reviews and articles about speakers, and in particular, information on The Audio Critic and Siegfried Linkwitz’s websites (which I consider to be two of best sources for accurate speaker information on the web), I believe I now understand the puzzle of the live music sound. To recreate (not just reproduce) the sound of live music in one’s home, high fidelity sound alone is not sufficient. Indeed, I suspect that one can probably have reduced fidelity and still perceive sound as live, though with the flaws in fidelity apparent, if the ambience clues are correct. (The optical analog of this is looking through a pair of smeared glasses. You perceive a real appearing, if blurred, image, even though it has low optical fidelity, because the 3D clues are still there.) The ear-brain uses reflected sounds to determine the structure of the sound in space and these have a characteristic pattern for live music. Speakers that recreate this best in a normal room appear to be those with a dipolar or omnipolar radiation pattern where the patterns are reasonably uniform up to at least 3 kHz. These generate the proper room reflections that are interpreted as having the character of the original music sound stage, giving that U-R-There feeling of live music. Of these two radiation patterns, the dipole would seem to be preferred for having less interaction with room acoustics, but as the Pluto speaker design by Mr. Linkwitz demonstrates, an omnipolar pattern can also be effective.
Only a few other available speakers exhibit these radiation patterns. Examples are the Magnepan dipolar planar speakers, the Orion dipolar speaker designed by Mr. Linkwitz, and the omnipolar Ohm Walsh Speakers. All are reported to give a wide, realistic sound stage (although the Magnepans are directional at higher frequencies due to their large flat radiating surface which tends to reduce their sweet spot).
The old Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker dating from 1967 (amazingly still available from Bose) was on the right track, but generates too much reflection from 8 rear speakers and only 1 front speaker. Bose based the reflection percentage on concert hall acoustics, but with this value in a typical sized listening room with its much shorter reverberation times, the sound at the ear is overwhelmed with multiple reflections (think hitting a golf ball in a tile bathroom). This muddies the virtual sound stage. It’s apparent that if a dipolar or omnipolar radiation pattern works well with 50% of the radiation directed to the rear hemisphere then 89% is way too much.
Standard “monkey coffin” rectangular box speakers, large or small, with forward-firing dynamic drivers, have a frequency dependent radiation pattern. They radiate forward in a unipolar manner at higher frequencies and approach an omnipolar pattern at frequencies below a few hundred Hertz. Even if a box speaker reproduces the sound with perfect fidelity, the reflection versus frequency from its radiation pattern in a normal room is atypical of live music and this is readily recognized by the ear-brain as music from a box. It will never really sound like live music. Of course one can still enjoy such music, as we all do, even without the live music ambience, perhaps by learning to accept (or ignore) the box speaker radiation pattern. It’s a personal preference as to the importance of the live ambience to your music listening pleasure. But I suspect it may be more important than many people realize unless they’ve heard speakers that produce the effect. To me, it’s essential, since I believe the holy grail of high fidelity is recreating the essence of live music, not just the sound. Of course that eliminates all the loudspeakers made which exhibit the box radiation pattern. And that would seem a rather disconcerting conclusion for the many box speaker manufacturers and owners. It requires a new paradigm for them as to what constitutes the best way to recreate the sound of live music. Box speakers RIP.(For a related discussion see the Orion review and the subsequent Postscript comments in the Audio Critic website at http://theaudiocritic.com/blog/index.php?op=Default&postCategoryId=1&blogId=1
P.S. Based upon all this I have decided to buy six dipolar Magnepan MMG-W’s for my setup.
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Dipole speakers do reduce room interactions in the bass frequencies but also create an unnatural "spaciousness" at higher frequencies that some people do not like, and others do (many people think two channel audio needs "colorations" to sound more "live".If you want to reproduce sound that more closely mimics a different venue, you need surround sound. Two-channel audio can be processed to create a surround sound effect. The processors (Lexicon, etc) are very expensive but they work well for most recordings (few people who use them are disappointed).
Even ignoring the fact that few audio recordings are of live music, and almost no movie audio is recorded live on the set .... you might be surprised to find out what live music sounds like in a typical small home audio or home theater room (compared with a nightclub or auditorium.) Have you heard live music in your room?
And I think any home speakers are likely to be a lot better than the typical AV speakers blasting way too loud at a typical amplified concert. Hey maybe that's what you need at home -- huge AV speakers blasting at hearing-damaging levels!
There are too many early sound reflections from nearby walls, floor and ceiling in home listening rooms compared to an auditorium where only the floor is close to the instruments. And the bass is much more uneven. The room is the weakest link assuming a good recording.
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A friend of my brothers was over the other night with his cello. He started playing it in the living room and it was amazing how different sounding it was. Powerful would be the word, and warm, so strong in the 80-400Hz region it was amazing. No system I have ever heard comes close.
Maybe at least once every day for the last 30 years by the pesky wife!My point, and I actually had one, was that live music played in a relatively small room like a typical home audio room or home theater does not sound like live music played in a nightclub or auditorium.
Sometimes live music doesn't sound that good at home.
You say the cello played in your room sounded great.
That may mean you have a room with good acoustics, you lucky guy, although one acoustic instrument played solo is not a strenuous test (I would expect it to sound good in most rooms, especially if you sat close to the musician).
A better test might be six people singing Christmas carols while someone plays the piano, with your ears located at least as far away from the singers as the normal distance between your ears and speakers when listening to a recording.
That has happened many times in my room and my too-reverberant room / nearby huge windows made it sound like 12 people were singing from about 20 feet away across the room. That's why I listen to recordings with my ears only 4' from my speakers. Live complex music doesn't sound so good in my too-reverberant room. My wife playing her piano solo is okay, not great, but that's not a great room acoustics challenge. A great challenge is listening to the wifey try to learn the Mission Impossible theme on her piano.
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in all my years in the music business i have never heard of an artist, producer, or engineer, who was trying to replicate a live performance. not even on a concert recording...the systems job is just to play it back in an enjoyable manner, or to correctly play back what is on the recording. either goal is valid, and both have little or nothing to do with faking a live event. this is a complete audiophile myth, and is absolutely no intention of trying to. shopping on line and going to a store are different. seeing a film about baseball, and going to a game are different. playing a cd or record, and going to a concert are different.
I have long regarded playing for a live performance and playing for a recording as different performance arts.The audience hears a live performance once, they can hear a recording many, many times. There are a lot of things that can work fine in a live performance but simply don't hold up to the repetitive listening a recording gets. There's a different atmosphere at a live performance than what you have at home, and that affects the listener's perceptions. The feel of the audience at a live performance can also affect what the performer does and we even have a term for that: "playing to the audience". It can produce some magical moments, and some less than magical ones too, on occasion.
I'm not certain that live performance and recording playback are "meant" to be different experiences—I could mount arguments for both sides of that debate, stressing different aspects of listening to music in order to support either side—but they are, as a simple matter of fact, very different experiences. An artist could strive to present the same view of a work on stage as in their recordings, but they definitely can't play the work in exactly the same way in order to do so.
Well put. I prefer to shop online and watch my baseball on TV. I enjoy live concerts and listening to CD's and records about equally.
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"Until recently it had been a puzzle to me why it was still generally easy to tell the difference between live music and reproduced music, even though the quality of the source material, amplifiers, and speakers has significantly improved from my young days with tubes and vinyl (subjectivist tube-and-LP loving audiophiles notwithstanding)."That presumption alone is questionable. Especially if "tubes and LPs" are removed from the equation. Aside from loudspeakers, where design IMO has indeed improved to a demonstrable degree. And I think digital sources have been getting worse, not better.
"Although audiophiles often go to great expense (including such snake oil products as magic power cords, HiFi fuses, and exotic cables) to strive to get ever more accurate music reproduction from their box speakers, there is still usually something lacking in the end result that prevents the music from sounding 'live'."
Although there are a lot of awful-sounding speakers, and a lot of awful-sounding speakers due to poor design of box enclosures, I don't believe good sound is limited to designs that are devoid of box enclosures. The best speakers I've heard, including homemade designs by Peter Clark and Don Allen, had box enclosures as well.
"Perhaps that's part of the reason for the never ending pursuit of better fidelity, sometimes to ridiculous lengths. The listener is aware something is missing and thinks it's some lack of fidelity, when perhaps it's really just a lack of the live music ambience."
Kind of like drinking orange juice that doesn't taste quite right, and citing the lack of added sweetener.....
"They have a desire for this ambience, even if it's not recognized as that, and the hope that it will somehow appear with the next small increment of improved fidelity, that fractional dB improvement in frequency response flatness or small percentage of distortion reduction or more power output or.... But, with typical box speakers, I now consider that a futile pursuit."
I don't see how "box speakers" have anything to do with ambience. I think sources and electronics failing to resolve low-level information are at fault here. The digitization of audio signals is an unavoidable cause of lost ambience as well. (Even with dither applied.)
What I think is lacking in music reproduction is sustained microdynamics along the entire dynamic scale. Part of that is indeed ambience, but I think the biggest culprit is lost linearity in the signal. Cumulative from source to speakers. Particularly in the bass, where any compression gets translated into congestion elsewhere in the spectrum, robbing the music of its ambience and microdynamics. (This is why high-efficiency/SET systems excel- They lose that linearity far less than high-powered amps driving inefficient speakers.) I've never heard a system that had both "saturated" bass and superior microdynamics and ambience retrieval.
"After reading numerous reviews and articles about speakers, and in particular, information on The Audio Critic and Siegfried Linkwitz's websites (which I consider to be two of best sources for accurate speaker information on the web), I believe I now understand the puzzle of the live music sound. To recreate (not just reproduce) the sound of live music in one's home, high fidelity sound alone is not sufficient. Indeed, I suspect that one can probably have reduced fidelity and still perceive sound as live, though with the flaws in fidelity apparent, if the ambience clues are correct. (The optical analog of this is looking through a pair of smeared glasses. You perceive a real appearing, if blurred, image, even though it has low optical fidelity, because the 3D clues are still there.) The ear-brain uses reflected sounds to determine the structure of the sound in space and these have a characteristic pattern for live music. Speakers that recreate this best in a normal room appear to be those with a dipolar or omnipolar radiation pattern where the patterns are reasonably uniform up to at least 3 kHz."
Once again, I've experienced no such correlation.
There is the one big question- Do you want the illusion of being at the venue of the performance, or the illusion of the performers being in your living room? I personally think the latter option limits the type of music the application would be ideal for. And I've never heard a "reflecting" system that sounded right with large-scale (rock, orchestral) music.
"These generate the proper room reflections that are interpreted as having the character of the original music sound stage, giving that U-R-There feeling of live music."
How would one determine if the room reflections are "proper?" Seems like this may be subjective.
"Of these two radiation patterns, the dipole would seem to be preferred for having less interaction with room acoustics, but as the Pluto speaker design by Mr. Linkwitz demonstrates, an omnipolar pattern can also be effective."
As long as the "bipolar" in question does not utilize the back wave of a forward-firing diaphragm. That back wave is inverted absolute phase..... (Provided the signal directly out the speaker is non-inverted.) And most omnis are not particularly efficient.....
"Only a few other available speakers exhibit these radiation patterns. Examples are the Magnepan dipolar planar speakers, the Orion dipolar speaker designed by Mr. Linkwitz, and the omnipolar Ohm Walsh Speakers. All are reported to give a wide, realistic sound stage (although the Magnepans are directional at higher frequencies due to their large flat radiating surface which tends to reduce their sweet spot)."
And as I stated, the back wave is inverted absolute phase.....
"The old Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker dating from 1967 (amazingly still available from Bose) was on the right track, but generates too much reflection from 8 rear speakers and only 1 front speaker."
I personally think the "direct/reflecting" was more a marketing gimmick than anything else. Technically, it suggests the sound is dependent on the acoustics and dimensions of the room. I've never experienced such application that to me sounded right. Even with speakers other than Bose. (Although since Bose uses separate rear-firing drivers instead of the back wave of forward-firing drivers, absolute polarity is a non-issue.)
"Bose based the reflection percentage on concert hall acoustics, but with this value in a typical sized listening room with its much shorter reverberation times, the sound at the ear is overwhelmed with multiple reflections (think hitting a golf ball in a tile bathroom). This muddies the virtual sound stage. It's apparent that if a dipolar or omnipolar radiation pattern works well with 50% of the radiation directed to the rear hemisphere then 89% is way too much."
In certain rooms "89%" may be "just right"....
Another problem is since a concert hall is much bigger and has a much longer reverberation time, it would be really difficult to re-create that effect in any living room. Unless you have a net worth comparable to that of Howard Hughes, and build a room the size of a concert hall....
"Standard 'monkey coffin' rectangular box speakers, large or small, with forward-firing dynamic drivers, have a frequency dependent radiation pattern. They radiate forward in a unipolar manner at higher frequencies and approach an omnipolar pattern at frequencies below a few hundred Hertz. Even if a box speaker reproduces the sound with perfect fidelity, the reflection versus frequency from its radiation pattern in a normal room is atypical of live music and this is readily recognized by the ear-brain as music from a box."
That may be true, but I really doubt sending reflections off the walls of the living room walls is any batter. I think it be worse.
And remember, the hall's ambience is on the recording. And a good recording on a good system will retrieve it, creating an illusion of the actual hall that's IMO far better than any ad-hoc wave reflection schemes within the room.
"It will never really sound like live music. Of course one can still enjoy such music, as we all do, even without the live music ambience, perhaps by learning to accept (or ignore) the box speaker radiation pattern. It's a personal preference as to the importance of the live ambience to your music listening pleasure. But I suspect it may be more important than many people realize unless they've heard speakers that produce the effect. To me, it's essential, since I believe the holy grail of high fidelity is recreating the essence of live music, not just the sound."
I've never heard the "essence of live music" effectively enhanced with reverberant room or reflected sound within a typical room. One may try that, in hope of making the sound more like Carnegie Hall. But in doing so, he could end up making the sound more like that of the local high school gym. It's a crapshoot. One is at the mercy of his listening room, which could be an acoustic gem or an acoustic disaster. (And if it's the latter, he'll have to spend thousands to fix it. And improvements are not guaranteed.)
What makes live music "live" is not the reflections alone, but how well the reflections are controlled and damped, to where the reflections in moderation enhance the live event. But what comes from actual musicians is not the same as what comes from a stereo. Otherwise one should be able to easily replicate live music with a stereo system by simply placing one inside the concert hall itself.
"Of course that eliminates all the loudspeakers made which exhibit the box radiation pattern."
I thing you're presuming all box speakers have forward-facing drivers, and all speakers that have forward-facing drivers are box speakers....
"And that would seem a rather disconcerting conclusion for the many box speaker manufacturers and owners. It requires a new paradigm for them as to what constitutes the best way to recreate the sound of live music. Box speakers RIP."
What do box speakers have to do with that? The Bose 901, which you touted above, is technically a box speaker.
If I had to list my reasons for why I think reproduced music doesn't sound live, I don't think "speakers designed with box enclosures" would make my top 100. Heck, it may not even make my list, period. For the vast majority of what I call the "extreme performers" in speakers happen to be of the box enclosure design.
My top reason for music not sounding "live" is simply the fact live concerts move so much air, actually replicating that in a living room would blow out the windows in one's house. Recordings, sources, and most speakers simply do not have the dynamic and linear capability to do so.
So in other words, if one designed a great "reflecting" system with non-box speakers, it would still not be satisfying to listen with a typical digital source. Although if one has a bad digital source, reflections may be a good way to mask the sonic ills.
So you may be mistaking the amusical effects of a bad digital source with lack of ambience.... The same lack of ambience you claim is caused by box speakers and lack of reflections in the listening room. I think it's caused by the disappointing across-the-board performance of digital audio. Which I would cite as the number one problem in sound reproduction.
...is well-taken. My top reason for music not sounding "live" is simply the fact live concerts move so much air, actually replicating that in a living room would blow out the windows in one's house.Right about the air, but geez Toodd I've had concert instruments in my house and the windows remained intact.
It was part of the original post.
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Jeez, I cannot even get away with impersonating a cable basher....
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It is all downhill from there. No matter how hard you try, you can't reproduce what you can't capture in the first place.
I agree absoultely with your assessment that generating room reflections that have the character of the reflections in a live venue is a key to natural-sounding reproduction. And as you noticed, very few speakers do a good job of this.A spectrally correct, well-energized, diffuse reverberant field is in my opinion vital to realistic-sounding music reproduction from the standpoint of timbre and reduced listening fatigue. When the reflections are dissimilar to the first-arrival sound, the timbre sounds unnatural and listening fatigue is likely to set in over time. Let me briefly describe the listening fatigue mechanism: The ear/brain system is constantly classifying sounds as either reflections or new signals, largely according to the spectral content of the sounds. The more the spectral balance of the reverberant energy is skewed, the more "cpu usage" required to correctly classify reflections - eventually resulting in a headache.
Now in my experience, getting the reverberant field right is not exclusively the province of dipoles and omnis (or quasi-omnis). There are other technologies that result in exceptionally uniform radiation patterns. I have put my money where my mouth is on this one - the five speaker lines I carry tend to do a much better than average job with the reverberant field. One is a wide/uniform pattern dipole; one uses cardioids and dipoles; one is a wide, fairly uniform pattern monopole; and two use low-coloration waveguides for pattern control.
There are three other areas that are vital to approximating the experience of live music as closely as possible: Uncompressed dynamics; freedom from coloration (the reverberant field comes into play somewhat here); and low-level detail and articulation.
What makes music sound live to me is low distortion and unfettered dynamics. Frequency response and radiation pattern only matters to me if it makes the sound tonally obnoxious. Note however that something can sound live AND tonally obnoxious at the same time, anybody whose played real music knows that.When the kid down the street is playing his drumset in the garage you KNOW he's playing a real kit, even if the door is closed and frequency response is skewed and imaging is nonexistant. That's because the clues that say "live sound" are based on dymanics and low distortion.
Same thing when you walk past a bar with a live band playing inside, you know it's live music. And your knowing has nothing to do with any audiophile notions of what sounds good.
That's the way it works with me, evidently it works differently with others.
> When the kid down the street is playing his drumset in the garage you KNOW he's playing a real kit, even if the door is closed and frequency response is skewed and imaging is nonexistant. That's because the clues that say "live sound" are based on dymanics and low distortion. <No, it's because (in my case, anyway) the kid SUCKS! No one would make a record with a drummer that bad. :)
> you know it's live music. And your knowing has nothing to do with any audiophile notions of what sounds good. <
Very well stated.
This is a very complex subject as a number of people have said. I agree with Donald North that binaural recording can sound very close to real in some respects, particularly spatially, but of course it can't give the body "thump" that a loud bass drum can give in real life. And as soon as you move your head the illusion is gone because real musicians don't move with the listener's head movement. Speakers are better in those respects but as any headphone listener knows, you lose details listening to speakers compared to headphones. Also, anyone can verify that a mono speaker reproducing a mono source sounds more "there" than two stereo speakers attempting to do the same thing. Reasons for this could include room reflections, inter-aural cross talk (each ear hears both speakers), spectral variations (no speaker puts out the same frequency response at all angles), etc. etc. etc. Still sticking to speakers, there does seem to be something to the notion that a big speaker producing a big wavefront can produce a feeling of size (e.g. an orchestra) better than a small speaker playing the same material at the same volume, even if the small speaker isn't overloaded and distorting.Then there's the room to consider. Unless you're living in an anechoic chamber, room reflections will always give the ear and brain a continuous reminder that they are in a room of a particular size, and that information will always be in conflict with any aural information (e.g. ambience, wall reflections, etc.) on the recording itself.
And then there is the recording. Recording engineers record either two channels or multichannels using different recording techniques, different microphone placements to try to achieve a "realistic" recording without having ANY knowledge of the playback system. In a pure Blumlein system using crossed ribbon (figure eight) technique, the playback speakers are supposed to be at ninety degrees to each other. Very few home playback systems are so positioned. Throw in multi-miked recordings, spaced omni recordings (e.g. Telarc), three microphone recordings such as Mercury. Well, let's just say they can't all be right. And that's not even taking into account that many microphones are not acoustically flat (and at which angle? - microphone frequency responses vary depending on where the subject is in relation to the microphone). Of course this also assumes that the engineer is even trying to get a "realistic" recording (whatever that means) and isn't using a graphic equalizer and compressor to achieve whatever sound his or her twisted, commercial mind thinks is "sellable."
Finally, I believe that we all listen differently. We have different tolerances for how much inaccuracy we can tolerate. People who prefer BBC monitors may find horns intolerably colored, whereas horn lovers may regard BBC monitors as bland and compressed. Dipole lovers can't stand monkey coffin boxes whereas big box speaker lovers think dipole bass is too wimpy. Etc., etc., etc. Some people are very sensitive to the effect of tweaks while others don't notice any difference at all. Some people will notice minute changes in soundstage, or coloration, or dynamics, whereas others ignore them. In theory, if one could exactly reproduce the original wave at the listener's ears then everyone should be able to say that it sounds real - we're not even close to that. With headphones, binaural is the closest, with speakers, Blumlein is probably the closest (at least theoretically) but very few recordings or playback systems are Blumlein oriented. It would be an interesting exercise to record a Blumlein recording and play it back with speakers placed at 90 degrees in an anechoic chamber to see how close to reality that would sound. It might be significantly better than can be achieved with the most expensive equipment in a normal room - or maybe not.
Compared to these factors, such things as whether you're using dipoles vs. front firing speakers, SET vs. PP tube vs. transistor, etc. really are relatively minor. Not that we don't enjoy arguing about those! :-) Lynn Olsen has referred to a stereo system as an illusion machine, and that's really true. Unfortunately the more critically you listen the more obvious the illusion becomes, regardless of what you listen to or how much it costs.
It's not about sounding like live music. It's about enjoying the music. Whether it sounds "live," or not, is irrelevent if the music is good. My .02 :)
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"If it sounds good, it is good."
The closest recorded and reproduced audio to the original live event, which I've heard to date, is binaural recordings played back through headphones.
Because it's a recording, not live music. I've said it before and i'll say it again: recorded music doesn't sound like live music. The furthur away from the master you get, the more different the music sounds. I do not agree with the room reflection assessment. In home environments, you really want to minimize wall reflections, not accentuate them. The first of those reflections would be cabinet reflections around the mid and tweeter. Many high end speakers minimize the cabinet in front and to the side of the mid/tweeter to stop the cabinet from "talking" to the drivers as much as possible. Different rooms have different surfaces, and different distances from speaker to back wall to side wall to listener dimmentions, therefore to design a speaker like a 901 to sound proper... spatially, in every room, would be pretty much impossible. I believe that maintaining the complexity of the original musical waveform gets you closest to the orginal recorded performance. Smearing the time/phase coherence of that waveform with side and rear walls and high order crossovers does not. I said RECORDED performance. Most recordings today are done in multi track studio's and are a series of single mic feeds....as many as 256 of them. Nothing "live" about that, is there? The job of the audio system in that case would be re-creating those original 256 mic feeds as they were layed down by the artists and placed in space by the recording engineer. Look for systems that maintain the original waveform if you want to get close to the original performance.
Even those that are not multi-miked, the sound of mics, mic preamps, and recording devices leave us quite a distance from live sound.Yet another reason why the "absolute sound" is a useful but not dispositive standard.
Separate instrument tracks, Soloists with headphones, multitracks, as stated above.
The original sound does exist. It comes from the instrument. It's a point source. Then the problems arise. First, you have the microphone. The recording can never sound any better than the mic that was used. Microphones condense 3 dimensions into just one: distance. They cannot hear left, right, up or down. So what you get is more like a pinhole camera type effect. Then you have the recording medium. Analog is more musical, digital quieter, cheaper and easier, so most studio's have gone digital. Then you have the engineer, who has hopefully made the correct choices for mics, mic placement, etc. The engineer then mixes the single mic feeds between left, center and right to make the sound pleasing to his ears. It just goes on and on......
Maui:I know we've banged heads [or closer to the truth you were just repeatedly "headbutted" by me... :o)]
But I could not agree more with this last post of yours.
The late great Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg said it best when he stated that most of the "damage" done to music happens right at the microphone membrane - and gets worse from there.
Your last statement: "Look for systems that maintain the original waveform if you want to get close to the original performance."
This makes good sense - AND it's measurable. It's just interesting that so few actually worry about the ACTUAL waveform coming out of their speakers, and instead use more subjective analysis like describing things like "tonal balance" and "detail" and "accuracy".
Flat frequency response (which IS flat amplitude AND phase response) and optimal step response is the way to go IMO.
I'm writing this on my calendar :-)
Problem is: The room significantly alters and distorts the speaker's waveform, time coherent or not, heard at the listening position.
Yabbut the damage the room does can either be mitigated with room treatments, changing room dimensions and even geometry, or simply moving speakers to minimize early reflections and "pick and choose" which bass modes to excite. You can even take a sample of the rooms transfer function (impulse response at the listening position) and "reverse process" this impulse (this is the basic concept of digital room correction) and cancel out the reverberations and reflections that the room imparts.But once the live sound is altered by mic membrane, mic placement, mics picking up extraneous sound, not even mentioning the effects of mixing, processing, and compression... that's it. The damage is done. Once something "other than live" is impressed on that disc (vinyl OR plastic) that's where the quest for live sound ends imo, not begins.
Not all recordings are bad, a select few may even be good. The point is that to speak only of a systems ability to reproduce (or recreate) live music and disregard the recording process is a little backwards in my mind. I believe more of the "live sound" information is lost or compromised before we even get it home.
And that's what I thought the crux of Maui's post was, and if it was, we are in agreement. He did mention speaker crossover phase issues.
You are correct though. Listening rooms have varying levels of reverberation and ALL room have bass modes.
I think there are different opinions of where to invest ones time, money and even worry. Audiophiles always say "Well, we worry about and optimize what we can..."
This philosophy sometimes makes NO sense at ALL. Say a student misses all but the last week of a semester. He may only have had exposure to 10 percent of the material. Does it make sense to invest the MOST time trying to ensure I get the MAXIMUM possible score (10/10 percent) at the expense of other exams and marks? NO way! It's better for him to get ZERO out of ten (default) and take the course again next year when you get a shot at ALL of the material. 10/100 is no worse than 0/100. This is my thinking with poor recordings. Play them on an I-Pod. Forget the optimization. It's simply not warranted. In fact, poor recordings can sound WORSE on revealing systems instead of better, especially (IMO) with excessive compression and excessively high recording levels, so prominent in "pop" music and other genres.
Room is a factor yes, but it's one we can affect.
First, I agree, the quest for "live sound" or even "good sound" begins at the recording. Unfortunately nearly all acoustic recordings (classical, jazz, etc) are done with many microphones, multi-tracks, signal processors, etc. Having done some of my own live recordings, it's quite startling their difference in clarity and "you are there" compared to commercial recordings. Something is definitely lost is the commerical recording's process.As for room acoustics, geometry and treatment can cure some problems, but nearly every speaker suffers from floor reflections, for example, and no one I know is placing 4-6" thick foam or other acoustical material on their floors between themselves and the speakers to suppress it.
In my experience, the best way to reduce room standing wave sound coloration is to tackle the problem directly by using speaker configurations, like dipole woofers, which naturally excite them less. I'm not a fan of digital room correction.
There are speakers which, by design, excite standing wave room modes and wall/floor/ceiling reflections less, and some people will like and prefer their sound. However some other people will not like their sound for a variety of reasons. The conclusion is: Everyone has their own preferences and because of this, there is no definitive solution for everyone.
Speakers designed to excite the room less (standing waves, reflections) tend to be directional and to some sound "dead". Quite the opposite of "live sound" from room reflections and reverberation. Which is right? To answer, one first must ask "what's the goal"?
I took some McBride $29 "Princess 8's" and put them in a Dipole config. I used DRC to EQ them and crossed them over at around 250Hz with a pair of 12.5" Focal woofer cabinets.Now, they sounded amazing for a $20 fullrange speaker, but lifting up the high-end with EQ didn't do them justice. (I should have just let them roll off naturally - they don't have any serious breakup modes - and add a tweeter.)
In any case, it was my first experiment with "open backed" speakers, and I must say, the image they threw was quite different than my various box speakers.
I could see myself being an Orion owner one day...
How right you are...We have a winner!!!
I've just finished my Orions... been listening to them for less than a week and I'm very happy. I still have a lot of setup and level adjustment work to do, and at some point I will add the rear-firing tweeter and see what all of the excietement is about.The Orions sound very, very good but I don't expect to ever hear "live music in my room". It's not just a problem about driver design, driver layout, distortion, baffles, or your room. I realized that "live, in my room" was never going to happen (with any technology that I can imagine today) when I read a report (Science, December 2005, pages 1414-1415) referring to the radial distribution of sound emmitted by stringed instruments. (Of course, I should have realized that a complex 3D vibrating shape would not emit a nice symmetrical sound field.) The violin itself sounds different as you walk around, as your angle to the violin varies. Now let's get several violins playing, then an entire orchestra. I don't see how this could ever be captured with today's equipment (at a realistic level of effort and at costs that could come close to what you or I would be willing to pay).
Still... the Orions sound pretty damn good.
Peter:Your post served as a large helping of food for thought about how orchestral pieces are actually recorded. I was just thinking out of the box there.
We're basically in agreement about the reality of reproducing live sound. It may "sound" live, but it's no recreation of a live event by any means (IMO).
By the way, I like the design philosophy of the Orions - and I hope to get a chance to audition a pair of them one day!!
Okay. Let's say I want to reproduce an orchestra. I start with the MOST possible expensive way, and that is NOT to see how much I can spend on speakers, CDP and room treatments.Method A- Presto's most expensive way:
1) Every player must play his part ALONE on the soundstage, and be recorded with the best possible microphone. (Multiple mics for orchestras instantly fail because every mic is recording every sound, just with different intensity and time delays). The mic is located at the very seat for which we want to create our "live sounding recording". (This shall be referred to as the refernce seat for later comparison of the ensemble en masse to the recorded effort).
2) Create an EXACT replica of the concert hall at home. In your... ravine... out back.
3) In the replica hall, place a phase coherent loudspeaker where EACH and every musician sat and aim it at the listening position. (Same seat as the mic was sitting in, in the REAL hall...)
4) Listen to your $1,000,000 recording on your $10,000,000 stereo!
5) Realize that you could have funded a LIFETIME of attending live concerts and had 'perfect sound' every time, or proceed to method B - where we start to compromise.
Method B- Presto's Second Most expensive way.
(Same as method A, but record musicians by group).
Method C- Presto's Third Most expensive way.
(Same as method B, but record by group and use a very large room instead of a replica hall)
Method D- Presto's Fourth Most expensive way.
(Same as method C, but record with two mics to approximate a stereo soundscape, and use a reasonable size room with room treatments.)
The point of this comical perspective?
Most of us are circling around "Method G or H". A room in a typical home with two speakers can create a wonderful and appealing soundscape, but there are too many DEVIATIONS from the original event in both the recording AND the "playback venue" for anything CLOSE to resembling the actual event to be reproduced.
I am not a frequent concert goer - but this much I have learned about "live sound": home stereos make a complete MESS of the original soundscape.
How come at home I am looking straight ahead at the perceived sound sources (or slightly upwards) when at a concert I am looking DOWNWARD at the stage?
Right off the bat, stereos LIE about the location of things, and optimizing stereos for "accurate soundstaging" when mics and mixing do 90% of the damage is a waste of time in my books.
Live music that is performed via a PA system is another matter. In that case, starting with the stereo analog sends to the amplifiers would be the best bet. Unfortunately, this is not how it's done, because in large live sound productions, the "stereo sends" are sent to active crossovers and delayed for flying speaker systems where low mid and high frequency drivers are FAR from being time coherent. So what you get on the "live" CD is a rather arbitrary (but often nice sounding) mix of the stage mics with a few snippets of "crowd noise" mixed in (only at specific times) for that added "live sound effect".
Playing a recording of a cello, guitar, or vocalist in a manageable sized room that is not excessively reverberant? We have a chance. Gettting "accurate" localisation for playback of orchestras in concert halls and live rock concerts in sports arenas?
Not buying it.
But "YMMV"!!
...because you sit much further away so dispersion must be taken into account. In actuality, looking down means you are more centered in that wave front.
Steve:I was referring to the actual stage position. Some stages (smaller venues or some front seats in certain halls) may have the listener actually looking up at the performers.
But in many cases, the listener is looking DOWN on the performance, and the soundsource seems to come from "below".
I guess one would have to close their eyes at a concert and IGNORE the musicians location to get a feel for what the "perceived" soundstage is even when a band is two tiers down.
Interesting.
In the live music case, I was biased to thinking that the soundstage must be lower, but this may not be the case at all.
A neat experiment for the next live performance I attend!!
Point taken and agreed to. I have thoroughly enjoyed the various approximations to "the live performance" that I've been able to realize in my home. My post was only to say that I think that going the whole nine yards is currently impossible in any practical way. I would love to be proven wrong (but I doubt that I could afford the resulting system).Peter
Most of the Ohms are only omnidirectional in the midrange yet the criss-cross the highs at about a 45 degree angle so that those off axis can get some fun too. It works rather well too.ps. I have some Maggie MC1s at home and like them as long as they have a sub. The highs for these are rather similar to the Ohm Walsh II in that they are angled inward between the speakers but at 30 degress instead of 45.
but in the end we will be stuck with the fact that most recordings are multimiked, are not even trying to create a soundstage, are compressed, etc. and therefore no speaker would (even in the ideal "speaker as perfect electric to acoustic transducer" situation) satisfy with most recordings. That is obvious fact.You have to find the one that answers your needs with the kind of music you listen to and the room, ears, and ancillary equipment that you own. It must allow you to enjoy music, which is its real purpose.
There seems to be the belief that live music lies at the end of the audiophile rainbow. For that to be the case, we need to be working on the recording side of the chain as well, which is not our M.O.
> Until recently it had been a puzzle to me why it was still generally easy to tell the difference between live music and reproduced music,>My take on the difficiencies of current audio reproduction (think of a full orchestra playing):
- Scale (size)
- Movement of air
- Effortless dynamic range
- Resolution of inner detail
- Top to bottom coherence
- Mix of hall ambient sound to direct soundAt best, I'd say a SOTA multi-kilobuck 2 channel system is only about 80% of the way there.
> Although audiophiles often go to great expense (including such snake oil products as magic power cords, HiFi fuses, and exotic cables)>
Don't knock 'em - they work.
> After reading numerous reviews and articles about speakers, and in particular, information on The Audio Critic...>
Read and believe what you want, but TAC is not avery credible source.
> The old Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker dating from 1967 (amazingly still available from Bose) was on the right track,...>
An extremely flawed design.
Let's see - snake oil, TAC and Bose 901 - that's 3 strikes.
> Even if a box speaker reproduces the sound with perfect fidelity, the reflection versus frequency from its radiation pattern in a normal room is atypical of live music and this is readily recognized by the ear-brain as music from a box.>
Perhaps, but the best don't sound 'boxy' and the ambient information picked up by the microphones is alread encoded on the disc so it will be reproduced properly if the speaker, room and equipment don't screw it up.
With only 2 channels, regardless of the speaker design, you may not quite be immersed in ambience the way you experience it in a concert hall, but with a good system and room, it can still be a pretty compelling reproduction.
> It will never really sound like live music.>
It depends on which aspects of live music reproduction are most important to you - ambience in your case - dynamics in mine.
> Of course one can still enjoy such music, as we all do, even without the live music ambience, perhaps by learning to accept (or ignore) the box speaker radiation pattern. It’s a personal preference...>
Exactly. It's all about personal preferences.
> Box speakers RIP.>
Not likely. Different strokes...
and listening room acoustics are by far the two most important parts of audio reproduction. While speakers are the most important single audio component, they are a distant third part of the equation. Every speaker has it's strong and weak points so it comes down to individual preference as to speaker choice. But without the first two parts of audio reproduction being right there's little hope of reproducing a live event.
Len
I'm neither a recording engineer or a qualified electrical engineer but I feel an inordinate amount of blame placed at the feet of audio hardware for the lack of perceived "live sound experience" should be reallocated squarely in the realm of software. If the mic serving as feed for any recording has any degree of overshoot, ringing, frequency aberrations, phase anomalies whatever, just at this jumping off point alone the final result will be flawed as compared to "live sound", the ensuing electronic processing/manipulation regimen notwithstanding. And this problem increases in scale in direct proportion to the scale of the musical event which is why small scale intimate recordings typically fare better than Mahler in this regard. Hardware capabilities, I'm sure, can be improved upon furhter but I don't see the holy grail of live sound in my room being the end result.Further, it is because of these "truths" that I do not hold up live musical performances as the absolute standard by which to judge the relative performance of an audio system. A more reasonable standard seems, to me, to be to compare one's system's prowess to an absolute standard that recognizes and takes into account the inherent limitations of current recording technology/methodology, if, in fact, you believe them to exist.
. . . then tell me that "ambience cues" are what's missing from most hifi. Rob's post is spot-on.You've developed preferences, that's terrific, have a great deal of fun. That's what it's all about.
Most recordings don't have the dynamics of live music nor can most systems reproduce the explosive dynamics of the real thing. Then there's the question of scale. Scale is a quality that's rarely discussed by audiophiles; we've become so accustomed to smaller than lifesize reproduction that we hardly even notice how puny most high end sound is. Real instruments are loud and, just as important, move a lot of air. An orchestra at full roar is almost a physical assault. A unamplified kick drum heard close to the stage can be felt in the chest as much as its heard in the ears. Most reproduced music - even from very big speakers - is little more than a miniature version of the original. The only audio system I've ever heard that came close to reproducing music with realistic scale was the Siemens Bionor Klangfilm speakers that were demonstrated at a Stereophile show in New York a few years ago. Of course each of those speakers is the size of a garage door and would completely overwhelm any room smaller than a movie theater so they're hardly a practical solution. The vast majority of audiophiles must content themselves with what amounts to a scale model of the real thing; the best most of us can do is choose whether we want an S or HO or Z scale version of reality and how much detail our little simulations will have.
I understand scale and dynamics are important. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I believe the perception of live music requires the ambience of live music, not necessary the volume. You can certainly disagree with that view. To me you can turn down the volume and it will still seem like live music, you're just sitting further back in the hall.
To me you can turn down the volume and it will still seem like live music, you're just sitting further back in the hall"Impossible as sitting further back in a whole also change the soundstage perspective. Turning down the volume will not alter the soundstage perspective just the SPL level, the volume is one the most important things necessary for recreating a better facsimile of the original event at home.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
> > you can turn down the volume and it will still seem like live music < <I don't understand how you can say that volume isn't a critical part of the experience of live music. That's like saying that a perfectly detailed and weathered HO scale model of a Union Pacific Big Boy steam locomotive is indistinguishable from the 132 foot long, 540 tons real thing. If your aim is to make reproduced music that is identical to live music then you've got to get every aspect of it right. If the reproduction's volume is reduced then it's not the same as the real thing.
Hard to argue with that, but it isn't the only thing.Before you go pointing the finger at speakers or any other component in the home setup as the main culprits, however, there are 2 things that make it extremely difficult to reproduce the ambience of live music in the home:
1- very few recordings capture that ambience. Recordings made with multiple microphones that are subsequently mixed down to 2 channels, play all sorts of games with ambience information. Simple 2 microphone setups can do it quite well if care is taken and there are a number of discs which demonstrate that, but the majority of discs fail. Even many/perhaps most live discs fail here. I don't have experience with surround sound music recordings but I would think that techniques like Ray Kimber's surrond sound music recording setup would help.
2- it's difficult to recreate the ambience of one space in another space. Acoustic treatment of the listening room is a great help in reducing the 'mask' that the listening room overlays over any ambience information contained in the recording. I suspect that some of the new digital equalisation techniques like those by TACT, DEQX, and Audyssey will also help but I don't think that they can ever be a complete replacement for all physical acoustic treatment. My point, however, is that it's never going to be possible to get the effect of the ambience of a live recording if the ambient signature of your own room gets in the way.
I think there is a 3rd aspect as well. Most live performance venues are large and a lot of the ambient info is extremely low frequency. You need a good sub or a very extended full range speaker to reproduce some of the ambience cues. Speaker placement is an issue if you use full range speakers because the locations for best bass response probably aren't going to be the best locations for a lot of other aspects of the sound. Subs can get around the placement problems but they need to be very well integrated into the overall sound.
Finally, though it doesn't concern ambience, I will add that the listening room presents a fairly insurmountable problem to the recreation of scale. Small rooms simply 'overload' too easily. The sound of a real orchestra at a climax in a real hall is much more open than the sound of a good recording at the same volume in any home listening room. Big spaces simply handle high volume sound better than small spaces and room size is always going to be an issue for home reproduction.
And, as a final caveat, I will say that there are times when reproduction of a live performance is not what I want. I've been to live performances where the sound has been bad and while I liked the performance itself, I would prefer to hear it in better sound quality than was delivered to the audience. The sound of a live performance can be great and it would be wonderful to be able to get that sort of sound at home, but the sound of most live performances is not up to the standard of the best (after all, that is implicit in the meaning of the word "best") and the sound of some is abysmal. Even when the sound is very good, it varies considerably depending on where in the room you are listening and different people have different opinions on where the best seat is located. In many ways the 'sound of live performance' is a very unhelpful goal. There is no single set of parameters that define it because in real life that sound is simply incredibly varied and also incredibly variable in quality. It's too much of a moving target to be genuinely useful in some ways.
I really don't think the best goal is the accurately reproducition of live sound in a home situation. I have doubts as to whether that will ever be achieved. I think the goal is simply producing a reproduction that is at least of a high enough standard to 'encourage' us to suspend our disbelief, to forget that we are listening to a recording. When that happens we simply get carried away by the music and the question of whether it is live or recorded is irrelevant. The experience that we have when that occurs is more than sufficent to satisfy us and leave us moved when the musical part of the performance is satisfying. Unfortunately, different people seem to have different requirements for the things that are required to achieve that suspension of disbelief and a system that does it for one person definitely doesn't do it for all. A 'perfect' system would but, short of that, people are always going to have individual responses to the particular imperfections that a given system has. If the imperfections are in areas that are not critical for you, then it's much easier to be satisfied with the result. If they're in an area that is critical to you, then you'll never be satisfied. Every system has compromises and one of the arts is in ensuring that your system makes the compromises that work best for you.
Maybe you haven't finished your homework yet.Here are several more holy grails that you may want to explore:
Single-ended triode amplifiers, the lower power the beter. 0.7 W 71A is eternal bliss.
High efficiency full range speakers, preferably horns. Only them and nothing else brings out emotion of music.
Multichannel playback. Two channels cannot confer full dimensionality.
Field coil speakers. Permanent magnets have incorrigible flaws.
Phase coherence. Spatial information is distorted without it.
Room treatment. Without it, no speaker will sound right.
Silver, teflon and permalloy. Ultimate materials for HiFi.
I have studied Linkwitz's site as well as Adire Audio (who shame on them, just revamped their site and no longer have the DDR dipole kit posted!), and reasearched Dipole speakers to an end (for me) as the way to go in my own personal living environments. While my reply only addresses a portion of the things you've mentioned in your diatribe, I DO have to agree with you- box speakers RIP... but in MY opinion!Having said this, I must say that box speaker RIP concept doesn't appeal to everyone. Just as the old saying goes, opinions are like a-holes, everybody has one." Some do not hear the benefit of dipoles vs, say, ported or even sealed boxes. Each type of speaker has its strengths and weaknesses. Everybody has likes and dislikes. You state your case very strongly, and I would be lying if I didn't agree with you. But, just like opinions, some people will be quick to point out the flaws and drawbacks of dipoles, numerous they may be in relation to the ease of use (to name just one) concept of box speakers.
Personally, I cannot listen to box speakers of ANY sort anymore- be they sealed, ported or TL. I have even temporarily removed the subwoofers (great sealed design boxes with incredible in-room extension), because after being subjected to the reduced room interaction of dipole systems (and yes, said dipole does NOT go as low or as loud as my beloved subs), I can clearly hear not only the room interaction, but the cabinet "sounds" of such systems. There are very few box systems out there, that once again to MY ears, even approach the "non-boxy sounding" ideal, but they are few and well out of my means!
I say that whatever sounds right to one's ears, is the truth to that one person! As stated, I LOVE dipole systems. My personal home made system does not play loud nor does it handle the Hip Hop or Rap bottom end, but it does sound REAL at low to mid levels. In my case, I have given up quantity for quality, and a lot more of it.
Carry on...
"David! You can KILL a man with a chopstick!" -Keith Charles, Six Feet Under
I don't like planars. Didn't like them years ago and didn't like them in a $100,000 setup I listened to a couple of years ago. That said, I have also stopped using my sub except for HT for the same reasons you stated. I have some basic Dynaudios and they are not boxy. Most of the time you can't locate the speakers. If I had the right space for big horns I would have those. When I replaced the steel bolt through the transformer in my amp with a non-magnetic one the bass improved substantially and enabled me to turn off the sub. In my room sound deteriorates quickly over 90db.
"Personally, I cannot listen to box speakers of ANY sort anymore"Cannot eh? Wow. Must be pretty damned inconvenient, a hardship.
Yup! The wife gets the Home Theatre and I get the audio only system!Cannot, indeed...
"David! You can KILL a man with a chopstick!" -Keith Charles, Six Feet Under
The most interesting research on reproducing concert hall "aliveness" I've found comes from the Stig Carlsson website:
http://www.carlssonplanet.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=10571310094a7e07d0cbf02dd8bb9f14Also, there are many more examples of current dipole and bipole (omnipolar) designs:
- Quad
- Martin Logan
- Sound Lab
- Eminent Technology, and
- Mirage, just off the top of my head, but perhaps you didn't intend your list to be exclusive.You put great faith in The Audio Critic. Are you aware of their favorable review of a model by a speaker company owned (at least in part, I don't have details but there has been much discussion on this) by the editor/publisher but without disclosure of this fact? Speaking for myself, I could not trust any of their opinions after that.
Bottom line for me? I would agree that the openness and spaciousness of dipoles and bipoles can be enjoyable. But, as Clark suggests, there are many other factors relating to real music, including dynamics. So, just as with so many of these factors in audio (analog/digital, tube/ss, etc.), if one approach or technology truly offered a window on the live music event, wouldn't it have pushed aside all competing design options?
You're incredibly analytitcal attempt to simplify the challenge of designing a realistic sounding speaker system is laughable.What you "think" you've figured out here has, and continues to challenge the best and brightest audio and speaker designers.
I also being a very analytical person, understand your great drive to plow through all the smoke and mirrors to get to what's real in this hobbie.
But, unfortunately it's just not that simple, and there's still a great amount we don't understand about the process of reproducing recorded music that sounds even close to the real thing.
Your opinion on what constitutes snake oil, is also telling...
The most telling test for live music is the out-of-the-room experience; you're approaching the sound source, you're not there yet, you can't even see who's playing, but YOU KNOW IF IT'S LIVE. Right?Then how can reflections within a room affect that appraisal? Moreover, box speakers being the most dynamic (including horns here), wouldn't they fool you best?
I like to listen from outside the room as part of evaluating what a speaker is doing.From the next room, all you can hear through the open doorway is the reverberant field (assuming you do not have line-of-sight to either speaker). In effect, you are throwing a spotlight on the speaker's reverberant field by excluding the direct sound. What comes through the open doorway will tell you a lot about the spectral balance of the reverberant energy in the room. What it will not tell you is the spectral balance of the direct sound, and that might still be peaky if the speaker has a lot of variation in its radiation pattern.
The reverberant field matters for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its influence on perceived timbre: Most of the sound power that reaches your ears in a normal speaker/room setup is reverberant energy, not direct energy. While the ear is largely ignoring the room reflections as far as imaging goes, the reflections still play a very significant role in perceived timbre and perceived loudness.
...is mainly a function of how well it loads the room. A small speaker, for instance, may exhibit excellent reverberant character but by no means will it convince an out-doors listener that something's really happening in-doors.Say, are you Mr. LeJ?
Hi Clark,Yup, dat's me. Duke LeJeune, the potato-transplant neo-Cajun.
Can you tell me what you mean by "how well it loads the room"?
I'll readily admit that the speakers I've heard sound most convincing from outside the room have tended to be medium to large speakers.
Now one of the problems with small speakers is this: It is very rare for a small speaker to have "excellent reverberant characteristics" because very few small speakers have a consistent radiation pattern through the midrange and treble region. I can think of a several approaches that work for a small speaker, but the typical 6.5" two-way format isn't one of them.
Another factor is this: Dynamic contrast. Small speakers tend to be relatively low in both efficiency and power handling, which means that power compression is going to be rearing its ugly head uglier and quicklier. Big speakers are much more likely to have a dynamic ease about them that's a key element of live music.
By loading the room, I mean there's no hope of a speaker that can't fill the room being taken for live music, outside that room.Also I think a small speaker *can* have excellent reverberation characteristics -- only not a lot of them. I mean, the characteristics.
On the dynamics of size, agree totally. That's why box speakers aren't RIP.
...no comment!
c
Good point, Clark
I agree that a stringent test is whether it sounds live outside the room. But it would seem more important whether it sounds live in the room. Can you see the sound stage in your minds eye? Do you feel as if you could walk over and touch a particular instrument? I believe that requires the correct room reflections, which a box speaker can't readily generate. Achieving perfect reproduction of live music sound is not the problem, it's reproducing the sound with the live music ambience included. I don't think most people appreciate the difference because they've never heard the difference.Dynamics are also important, and some of the dipole speakers, such as the Orion using standard drivers, are as dynamic as standard speakers.
"Do you feel as if you could walk over and touch a particular instrument?"Let me get this straight. In an auditorium, complete with reflections, and a stage full of live instruments, you would be able to walk up blindfolded and zero in on a specific instrument?
I think in certain circumstances that you could get close. But with a stereo recording you should be able to do the same. The depth of the soundstage is one that I don't get. If I were to close my eyes sitting in front of an orchestra, I don't think I could tell whether or not the drums were in the front or rear of the other instruments.
"I don't think I could tell whether or not the drums were in the front or rear of the other instruments.
"Really? I don't find this to be so difficult...especially if I am sitting in the front third of the concert hall.
Remember, when orchestral recordings are made many of the instrument groups are close miked and then mixed as if you were sitting quite close to the orchestra. If you are in the first few rows it is quite easy to localize instruments as direct sound dominates.
I have an orchestral recording made with only a single stereo ribbon microphone and the sense of depth on this recording is like what I hear live when sitting in the middle of a good concert hall. Very realistic but a killer in terms of dynamics for most systems.
Describing the soundstage as being deep, or 3D makes little sense given how most music is produced. If I hear (no visual cues) a set of drums 100meters distant, and a piano 20meters distant, I could probably tell that the piano was closer. But that is not a real situation. Even sitting in the front third, the depth of the orchestra is going to be some fraction of the distance from the listener to the nearest performers. And that is orchestra music. What about rock, jazz, vocal/piano and most other themes? There is no real depth to the performers in a live performance (without the visual cues). Closing your eyes and imagining depth is a fantasy. And that is live music. What about studio recordings? Regardless of how it is mic'd, where is the depth of field?
In an auditorium or concert hall, it's hard to locate particular instruments exactly by sound. It gets easier as you get closer to the performers but listening in the far field where the reflected sound can easily dominate the direct sound destroys, or "muddies" the information we need for precise location. On the other hand, if you're in a normal sized room sitting around a table with a group of people, it's pretty easy to close your eyes and locate each one of them. You're in the near field, the direct sound dominates, and the task is easy because everything in the sound that acts as a cue for our brains to do the job is about as clear as those things are going to be.Being able to locate things by sound, the whole imaging and soundstage area of audio, works pretty much the same as it does in real life with one added requirement. There has to be something in the recorded sound to provide the cues, so we need to be able to hear the performer in at least 2 channels. If they're in one channel only, they localise at the speaker. Provided they are present in 2 channels, it's pretty easy to do the location thing if you're listening in the near field. It gets harder as you move further away, out of the near field and the reflcected sound from your room becomes more prominent. Whether or not the recording used a simple microphone setup to record all of the performers individually or individual microphones for each performer with individual performer tracks then fed to 2 or more channels to provide the location info also makes a difference. Simple microphone setups that record all of the performers in real space definitely do a better job in my view.
Many people complain that the imaging/soundstage they get with recordings is artificial but in many instances they like listening to live music from a seat in the far field where they can't locate individual performers and they're either listening in the near field, or close enough to it, at home to be able to do so. They could solve their problem at home quite easily by using a bigger room and simply sitting further away from their speakers but that usually isn't an option. Instead they complain about the recordings sounding 'artificial' or 'wrong' and simply don't realise that what they regard as a problem with recorded sound is simply an artifact of their particular listening setup.
Whether you can determine location by ear or not in a live performance, it is possible to duplicate that aspect of the live experience, if the recording has the necessary information, simply by using the appropriate speaker and listening position locations to preserve or mask the cues that allow us to determine location by sound.
c
z
"...whether it sounds live in the room. Can you see the sound stage..."Begging your pardon, but what does sound have to do with seeing? Is this not a misapplication of visual criteria to audio?
I'm sorry if my wording did not properly convey my ideas. I'm taking about the mind's eye. That with your eyes closed you still get a feeling that each instrument has is own location in the room and you can identity there location, at least to a resonable extent both side to side and fore and aft. Suppose there were a live band in your room. Wouldn't you be able to do that?
z
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